Boishaaier 2022

Bo od s ka p van d i e s ko o l ho o f

Mnr D Swart (Skoolhoof)

headmaster’s message

Toe ek in 2021 die gevreesde Covid-19 ten prooi geval het, was dit ’n onaangename verrassing, sowel as die skielike wete dat dinge nou rêrig dalk baie sleg kan uitdraai, soos ongelukkig vir baie van ons vriende en familie.

Terwyl ek sonder voorbehoud die liewe Vader dankbaar is dat Hy my op die ou end simptoomloos daar deurgesien het, was die hardnekkige vraag tog elke aand in my kop: Wat as ek môreoggend om drieuur wakkerskrik en dinge het ewe skielik dramaties versleg? And I think this was also the case in the beginning of 2022. What if? As the HM (in the case of most school managers, this stands for “Headmaster”; in my case, “His Majesty”, of course!), I was plagued by the great What If? What if, in spite of our best efforts and our slogan of “As normal as possible as soon as possible”, we couldn’t get our academics back on track again? What if our boys, as happened in other schools, decided that it was better to lie on a sofa and watch TV

all day long instead of standing in the hot sun playing cricket? What if the so-called “new normal” the prophets of doom were casting about like traditional weapons, was to prevail? But once again, The Boys picked themselves up by their bootstraps, and this time, the surprises were overwhelmingly positive. The Boys’ High spirit prevailed. The spirit that says: truly, there is nothing like impossible. There might be something like “extremely difficult”, yes, but … nothing like impossible. But still, time goes on and, as “an island of excellence in a sea of mediocrity” as the great poet and politician Matthews Phosa once referred to our old Blue School, we remain confronted with the realities

of external factors which generally seem to be going downhill. We had to acquire technology to keep our lights going in the hostel and school despite load-shedding sessions, to keep our boys on track academically and provide proper study opportunity – of course, at great expense. We need to acquire more classrooms specifically built for technological study like robotics and coding, entrepreneurship and the like. Like the Bard so rightly said, time and tide wait for no man. Furthermore, we need to acquire accommodation for young teachers as a bargaining chip in appointments, what with Paarl property prices being what they are, as other schools are pulling ahead of us in this regard. Finally, we should acknowledge that it is time

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